Many manufacturing processes require that a plurality of substantially identical articles are subjected to various pressure and/or temperature process steps. At times, during or as a result of such process steps, the articles can be mechanically bound together. Subsequently, the bound pads must be separated prior to additional processing. One such process in which such steps take place is in the manufacture of aluminum memory disks. Memory disks are typically manufactured from a nonferrous material such as aluminum and are further processed for installation as a component of a hard drive memory in desk top computers and the like. Memory disks are typically manufactured from thin disks of aluminum sheet material. The disk can include a central aperture. During the manufacturing process for aluminum computer memory disks, blank disk is stamped from aluminum sheet. The stamped disks are collected and stacked. Pressure is applied by means of a clamping mechanism to the stack during various thermal processing steps. During such processing, the stack of individual disks often becomes tightly bound together. Upon completion of thermal processing, and prior to further processing, the individual disks must be physically separated one from another. Typically, the individual disks are pried from the stack one at a time. The separation process must be accomplished in such a fashion as to avoid causing any surface damage to the disks. The sliding contact can cause damage to the surface of the disk, rendering it useless.
A common method of separating each disk from the thermallypressed stack of disks is to use a pressurized air flow that is manually directed against the stack of disks, separating each successive disk from the stack of disks. The separated disks are manually positioned for subsequent processing. Obviously, this process is both time consuming and labor intensive. In spite of the fact that an air pressure separating technique is employed, it is not uncommon for the disks to experience some damage.
It is an object of this invention to provide a method and an apparatus for separating stacked articles.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus by which thermally processed, pressed stacks of blank computer disks can be separated from each other.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a relatively economical apparatus capable of replacing the current labor intensive manual method of separating memory blank disks one from another after thermal processing.
It is still another object of this invention to provide a method for separating stacked articles in such a fashion as to avoid any lateral contact between the stacked objects.